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Autistic man from East Boston who loves trains disappears again

Boston Police report they are looking for Jeffrey Cooper, last seen on Border Street on Friday.

Cooper, who has been going on walkabouts since he was a young teen, is 23, about 6' tall and has a slim build. He was last seen wearing a Celtics baseball cap, prescription eyeglasses with a gray, white and black shirt, blue jeans and a gray sneakers and carrying a a gray backpack. Jeffery is autistic and is not verbally responsive.

Yesterday, on a Green Line train idling at Kenmore, my girlfriend sat across from a man who police, one of whom was wearing a hazmat suit, trying to coax a person they kept calling Jeffrey off the train. She said he was a tall, slim African-American man carry a box with assorted wires and duct stuck all over it. She said when the police kept asking if his name was Jeffrey, he only replied no. Was it the same Jeffrey? Possible. The weird thing about the event was that when she arrived at Kenmore on the 57 bus, went downstairs to board a train, T officials and the police were still letting people on the train even while they were trying to coax Jeffrey off the train. Though this person was most likely the missing Jeffrey and a person in need of help, it seems reasonable to think that when they send someone wearing a hazmat suit onto a train that they probably shouldn't let the public on the train.

J. Cooper has a pretty long track record of being a danger only to himself. And I'm proud of Boston for handling his disappearances accordlingly. He was probably holding some trash he picked up, in which case, yeah, the person clearing it away should wear some protection, but the rest of us should just be able to get on with our day.

I know he was found, but hearing stuff like this upsets me. I am a Special Education teacher, and one of my students is a 6 year old black boy with Autism who also loves trains. So this man reminds me of an older version of him, <3